When
by Emsta
Summary: A pure, Kibbs fluff fic, following several years. R & R people... WARNING: character death, at end


**Disclaimer**: I don't own them. Someone else does, I just borrow them, and make them do little dances for my own amusement.

**Inspiration:** I was browsing through the fics here and came across Deep Dark Secrets… the summary at the time was _"She was pregnant. Kate was actually pregnant; with his little boy or girl. A child he might never have a chance to meet." _ and I thought, probably more hoped, that it was a Kibbs, because I'm obsessed with them at the moment. This came to me one night after reading it and I had to write it. After watching _See No Evil_, I was further convinced that this fic was keeping with Gibbs' character, so it got finished.

**A/N:** Well, some of the little facts might be not entirely correct, because I'm not sure whether I picked some of them up from fics or from the show.

* * *

When they first started dating, the director allowed them to remain in the same team on the sole condition that it wouldn't change anything for the worse at work. The moment something changed, one or the other would be out the door.

They argued about it many times, both willing to leave for the sake of the other. She suspected afterwards, that the main reason he continued arguing with her was because he enjoyed making up as much as she herself did.

When they moved in together, Dinozzo had warned him against hurting her, and Abby had warned her against hurting him. They had both known what they were getting into - them being together made it more dangerous, not only to themselves, but to the other members of the team as well.

When they went out on the field investigating, the line between work and play had been harder to keep clear. Where he would have been happy, even encouraged, her to flirt in the past, to help with the investigation, she now had to remind him there was no competition, he was the one she wanted to be with, not any Tom, Dick or Harry. When they got back, she would proceed to show him just how much she meant it.

When he proposed, and she accepted, the few who knew had celebrated and he began to talk of retiring, of finishing his boat, knowing that once they made it public, one of them would have to leave. Not wanting that day to come any sooner than need be, she wore her ring on a chain around her neck while at work or on her right hand.

Slowly, the grumpy boss they had known disappeared. Sometimes a day would go by and they'd realise he hadn't yelled at anyone.

When she told him she was three months pregnant, he was stunned. He couldn't make his mouth move to say anything and had slept the night on the couch. The next afternoon when he had arrived home from work, having given her the day off, he discovered most of her things packed and loaded into the car.

He watched in a stunned silence as yet another woman walked out of his life.

* * *

The aftermath left Jethro Gibbs much changed. He still worked, but wasn't as fast as he used to be. His boat remained in the basement, unchanged. Grumpy Gibbs returned. Concerned and cornered by his remaining team, the director sent him on vacation. They became even more concerned when the stubborn man didn't argue.

After one too many glasses of alcohol with a sober Ducky, a revelation was made by the latter about his co-worker and friend. The problem, and difference, in this case was that when Kate walked, Jethro lost more than just a companion, and fiancé he had lost his heart, along with the child he had always dreamed of. A child that none of his previous wives had wanted.

A few weeks after she walked out of his life, he received a small parcel at work with no return address. It contained the engagement ring he had painstakingly picked out and she had never really worn as well as a piece of paper. He turned it over and his heart lurched. It was an ultrasound dated a week earlier. That's when it hit him. _She was pregnant. Kate was actually pregnant with his little boy or girl. A child he might never have a chance to meet. _

He didn't know whether to do a happy dance or to cry. He wanted to dance because his child had life and it hadn't been aborted and he wanted to cry because he wasn't sure that he'd ever be a part of its life. Neither would be acceptable Gibbs behaviour. Mind you, he wasn't sure he cared anymore, and that scared him.

When McGee came up beside him, glancing over his shoulder, not sure of how to approach his grouchy-again boss, Gibbs didn't bother to hide the paper that he had received. McGee didn't bother to try and get the elder man to explain why he was holding an ultrasound, marked Caitlin Todd. He did, however, store the information up to consult Abby later.

If Dinozzo or McGee were concerned as to why they were ordered by the director to find their ex-colleague outside of work hours without Gibbs knowing, they didn't voice it. They began with the obvious clues, searching for the doctor's surgery that had taken the ultrasound. It didn't take them long, and they discovered that it wasn't that far away from one of her brother's houses. It was as if she wanted to be found.

When they approached Gibbs with her address and phone number, they were petrified as to how he would react.

When he stood, staring at them, not making a sound, and silently taking the piece of paper from Tony's hand, they would swear later they saw tears form in his blue eyes.

When Gibbs talked to Ducky about his plan, the second man didn't bat an eyelid. Since the discussion over a couple of beers (actually, more than a couple on Gibbs' behalf and none on the doctor's) Ducky had known the other man's future path better than Gibbs had himself.

When Gibbs requested leave a few weeks later, they were all relieved. The team were certain of two things- one, if Kate didn't want him back, she would have done a better job at hiding- she had the training, experience and connections to give herself a new identity; and two, Gibbs was going to go after her.

When he walked out of the office for his leave and into the elevator, the entire office sighed with relief. They didn't see the smile that spread over his face as he heard the sound.

* * *

When he arrived at the house she was staying in with her brother Tom, Tom's wife Louise and their two daughters, Hillary and Eliza, he sat in the car for over an hour. Despite the drive being long and full of rambling thoughts, he was still unsure as to how he was going to approach this.

What he didn't notice was her watching him through the blinds.

When Tom opened the door, Gibbs began to plead his case, unsure as to how Tom would react to his baby sister's notably older boss turning up and professing his love on the front doorstep. After letting him sweat it a bit, Tom called Kate down, warning Gibbs that she had retained her service weapon, and that hormones during pregnancy weren't exactly pretty.

When Kate made her way to the door, he noted the small bulge that was his child and his heart fluttered.

When Tom peered into the living room half an hour later, he was glad to see his sister smiling. She was sitting on a couch across the room from Gibbs, who was pacing and throwing his arms around in a passionate speech. He left the house to pick up his daughters and allow the couple privacy. As he pulled out of the driveway, he decided that he'd take Louise out for dinner sometime soon to remind her just how much she meant to him.

When Gibbs had sat down next to her on the couch, he held out his hand to touch her stomach and she moved it so he could feel the baby within her move.

When he placed her ring back on her finger, where it belonged, she didn't try to hide the tears that rolled down her cheeks. He didn't, and couldn't, promise her the world, and she didn't want it. It was enough that he'd come chasing after her. She knew enough about his past to realise that something was different this time. She had something that his ex-wives hadn't had, and she was glad. He hadn't promised he'd love her for the rest of their lives - with his track record, he didn't think she'd have believed him. He did, however, make a promise to her stomach to love his child, and protect it until the day he died.

* * *

When they were joined together in the sight of God and the congregation, he sent a silent prayer to a God he hadn't entirely been sure existed, but was willing to consider the existence of now, that this time it would work, that this time his feelings were strong enough to make what they had last and that they might, just, live happily ever after.

When they got back from the surprise honeymoon his team had organised for them, she went into labour. Hours, hoarse throat and bruised fingers later, their baby daughter Melanie was born, healthy, loved and beautiful.

The day after Kate and Melanie came home from the hospital, he began to pack up his desk, leaving a gaping hole in the office. As he left for the final time as an agent, two days later, he didn't look back. He was going to the woman and child he had always wanted, the life he'd tried to start three times previously but never succeeded successfully.

When Melanie turned three, they finally had to address the problem of removing the boat from the basement. For her fourth birthday, they took Ducky, Tony, Abby and McGee out on the boat. The heavily pregnant Abby and the birthday girl were the only one who didn't experience seasickness at some stage. Melanie had taken to sailing and her father's boat like a duck to water - Kate suspected it had something to do with the fact that the young child had spent a lot of the first year of her life asleep in her cot in the basement.

When the boat capsized, the team congregated in the search headquarters, anxious and afraid for the grey-haired man who had been occupying it that day.

When the answer came through, a confused Melanie looked on as her mother collapsed in tears, regaining her composure long enough to see the small girl out of the room before she began screaming at everything and anything she believed in... anything other than his love for them both. She couldn't understand why, this time, it hadn't been strong enough to bring him back to them.

When Melanie asked her mum when Daddy was coming home, the small girl didn't understand why the usually strong woman broke down in tears. When Ducky, his eyes glazed, explained that her dad wasn't coming home ever again, she still didn't understand why. It would be many months until the group convinced her that it wasn't anything she did that made her daddy not come home, that it wasn't her fault and that if he could, he would have given anything to be there, next to her, holding her hand, brushing her hair, reading her stories...

When the news of his death became public, the small family, once consisting of three, now consisting only of two, were swamped in condolences from people who would never had told the irritable man how much they relied on and treasured him.

When, for the fourth morning in a row, Kate threw up the contents of her stomach, the uncharacteristically docile Abby handed her a home pregnancy test. When the small stick showed a positive result, she sat down on the floor, next to the bathtub and cried.

Slowly, day-by-day, the team began to grieve, and day-by-day, the pieces of Kate's life began to group back together.

When, eight months after he had died, she looked into the eyes of her small sons' for the first time, Kate saw her late husband looking back at her through the bright, blue eyes and the identical, contented smiles so like the one that he had always worn while he slept, his arms wrapped around her.

She realised then, surrounded by those who loved her, and had been loved by him, that he hadn't left. That he'd always be there, with her, for as long as she needed him. He would be there, in Tony, when Melanie went on her first date, wanting to threaten the boy who showed at the door with his service weapon. He would be there, in her sons', when they played pranks on each other. He would there, in McGee, who helped when Melanie began her own boat, needing to feel close to the man who she only barely remembered and always associated with the smell of the wood, stemming from her days in a cot in the corner of the basement.

He would be there, Kate just had to look hard enough, and he'd be there for the rest of time, for as long as she needed him, until she was able to let another in, not clouding the memory of the first, but just as needed, just as loved, and just as important.

* * *

**A/N:** To quote a cartoon character: "That's all folks". So, please review, tell me where I went wrong, where I went right, and if you think it's a believable story. 


End file.
